`Are you on my complement?' I asked bluntly.
`For about half a day.' Not long enough, if this turned out to be the one case in fifty that was complicated. `What's the plan, Falco?'
`How far have you gone?'
`Corpse is still in situ. I'll introduce you when you like. He's not rushing off anywhere. This lot all claim they were together out here throughout the relevant period.'
`Which was?'
`After you left in a huff this morning -' He grinned; I just grinned back. 'The deceased said he was going to work on manuscripts and went into his house…' I glanced around while Fusculus was talking. There was, as Petro had mentioned, a doorway and a corridor which obviously led further inside the property. But if Aurelius Chrysippus was a rich man, that could hardly be the main entrance. Petro had described it as a grand abode. There must be formal access elsewhere.
'So Chrysippus was being studious. Then what?'
'A couple of hours later a slave was surprised to see the master's lunch still sitting on a salver, untouched. Somebody then found' the body and the screaming started. One of our sections was just up the street, dressing down the owner of a popina for a food offence. Our lads heard the racket, but did not have the sense to scarper without looking. So we're landed.'
'No,' I said calmly. 'I'm landed. Still, that should assist your clearup figures.'
`You reckon you're the bod for it?' Fusculus chortled genially. 'A natural.'
'Right, I'll get the drinks in, ready to celebrate.'
'You're a hero. So what have you done so far without me?'
He waved at the scriptorium staff. 'I've been taking statements from
this piteous bunch. Everyone who was in the main house when we
arrived has been confined to quarters there's no guarantee we collared
them all, though. A couple of our lads have begun working through
the house slaves for any information of interest.'
'What's the set-up domestically? Was he a family man?' 'That I've yet to find out.'
I nodded at Euschemon. 'Anything to say for himself?'
'No.' Fusculus half-turned, letting Euschemon hear him. 'Tight as a clam. But he's only had the gentle treatment so far.'
'Hear that?' I winked at the scriptorium manager, hinting at unspeakable brutality to come. 'Think about it! I'll speak to you later. I shall expect a sensible story. Mean time, stick there, where you're parked.' Euschemon frowned uncertainly. I raised my voice: 'Don't budge!'
Fusculus motioned a ranker to watch Euschemon, while he and I went into the main property to inspect the scene of death.
XI
A SHORT, DARK, undecorated corridor with a slabbed stone floor led us straight out into the library. Light flooded down from rectangular openings high above. It was very quiet. Exterior noise was muffled by thick stone walls. They would baffle interior noise too. A man being attacked here could call for help in vain.
The plain approach had done nothing to prepare us for the vast scale of this room. Three tiers of slim columns mounted to the ceiling vaults, decorously topped with white capitals in all three classical orders: Ionic, Doric, Corinthian. Between the columns were pigeonholes, sized for complete scroll sets, rising so high that short wooden ladders stood against the walls to aid retrieval of the upper works. The pigeonholes were stuffed full with papyri. For a moment all I could take in were the quantities of scrolls, many of them huge fat things that looked of some age – collections of high-quality literature, without doubt. Unique, perhaps. Occasional busts of Greek playwrights and philosophers gazed down on the scene from niches. Poor replicas that my father would have sneered at. Too many heads of that well-known scribbler, 'Unknown Poet'. It was words that counted here. Words, and whether they were saleable. Who wrote them came a poor second in importance.
The terrible sight on which the bald reproductions were staring down certainly gave me a chill. Once my eyes fell on the corpse, it was hard to look anywhere else. My companion, who had seen this once, stood quiet and let me take it in.
'Jupiter,' I remarked quietly. It was hardly adequate.
'He was face down. We turned him over,' Fusculus said after a while. 'I can put him back as we found him, if you like.''Don't bother for me.'
We both continued staring. Then Fusculus blew out his cheeks and I murmured, 'Jupiter!' again.
The open centre of the room was chaos. It should have been an area of peaceful study. A couple of high- backed, armless pedagogues' chairs must have normally served readers. They and their plush seat cushions now lay overturned on the exquisite geometric marble tiles. The floor was black and white. A pattern of great mathematical beauty, radiating outwards in meticulous arcs from a central medallion that I could not see because the body covered it. Ravishing work by a master mosaicist – now spattered with blood and soaked in pools of spilled – no, thrown, poured, deliberately hurled – black ink. Ink and some other substance – thick, brownish and oily, with a strong though rather pleasant scent.
Aurelius Chrysippus lay face up in this mess. I recognised the grey hair and spade-shaped beard. I tried not to look at his face. Someone had closed his eyes. One sandalled foot was bent under the other leg, probably a result of the vigiles flipping the body. The other foot was bare. Its sandal lay two strides away, dragged off, with a strap broken. That would have happened earlier.
`I'll find something to cover him.' The scene shocked even Fusculus. I had seen him before in the presence of grisly corpses, accepting them as matter-of-factly as any of the vigiles, yet here he had become uncomfortable.
I held up a hand to stop him. Before he went searching for material to drape on the remains, I tried to work out the course of events. `Wait a moment. What do you think, Fusculus? I assume he was on the marble when found? But all this must have taken some time to achieve. He didn't give up easily.'
`I doubt if he was taken by surprise – a room this size, he must have seen whoever was coming.'
`No one heard him call for help?'
`No, Falco. Maybe he and the killer talked first. Maybe a quarrel developed. At some point they grappled. Looks as if one party at least used a chair to fence with; probably both. That was just one phase of the fight. I reckon the opponent had him on the ground by the end, and he was face down, scrabbling to escape what was being done to him. That was how it finished.'
`But before that he and the assailant – or assailants? – had been eyeballing. He knew who it was.'
`The clincher!' agreed Fusculus. `The assailant knew there would be consequences unless this one was finished off.' `Chrysippus. That's his name.'
`Right. Chrysippus.'
We afforded him politeness. But it was hard to think of what remained as having been a man who lived like us not long before.
I moved nearer. To do so I had to wade through a carpet of bloodspotted papyrus – scrolls that were still rolled, and others that had shot open as they fell, unravelling and then tearing as the fight progressed. These scrolls must have been out that morning, in position to be worked on in some way. There was no sign that they had been wrenched from the pigeonholes, which all looked well ordered, and anyway the wreckage lay too far from the walls of this immensely spacious room for that to have happened. They must have come from the tables that stood at intervals, one still containing a stacked pile of unboxed documents.
`You can see it was a face-to-face issue at some point,' Fusculus said. `Some of the punches were landed from in front.' Quietly he added, `And the other business.'
The `other business' was both inventive and horrible.
Avoiding various viscous pools, I stepped carefully right up to the corpse. Kneeling beside it, I agreed with Fusculus. One cheek had been jellied. Fusculus waited for me to comment on the rest. `Ouch! Very
